Popular Television Drama Critical Perspectives

This collection of essays examines landmark British television programs of the last forty years, from Doctor Whoto The Office, and from The Demon Headmasterto Queer As Folk. Contributions from prominent academics focus on the full range of popular genres, from sitcoms to science fiction, gothic horror and children's drama, and reconsider how British television drama can be analyzed. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in many academic disciplines that study television drama.

Jonathan Bignell is Reader in Television and Film in the Department of Film, Theatre and Television at the University of Reading. Stephen Lacey is Principal Lecturer in the Department of Contemporary Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Notes on contributors

vii

Acknowledgements

x

Editors' introduction

1

(8)

Part I The boundaries of genre: the sitcom

9

(60)

Editors' introduction

11

(4)

`Our usual impasse': the episodic situation comedy revisited

15

(19)

Barry Langford

Remembering Butterflies: the comic art of housework

34

(17)

Julia Hallam

They do `like it up `em': Dad's Army and myths of Old England

51

(18)

Robin Nelson

Part II Quality and the `other' drama

69

(74)

Editors' introduction

71

(5)

Space for `quality': negotiating with the Daleks

76

(17)

Jonathan Bignell

This is the modern world: The Prisoner, authorship and allegory

93

(17)

Mark Bould

Can kinky sex be politically correct? Queer As Folk and the geo-ideological inscription of gay sexuality

110

(15)

Peter Billingham

`Just that kids' thing': the politics of `Crazyspace', children's television and the case of The Demon Headmaster

125

(18)

Maire Messenger Davies

Part III Revisiting the familiar

143

(72)

Editors' introduction

145

(4)

Haunted houses, hidden rooms: women, domesticity and the female Gothic adaptation on television

149

(17)

Helen Wheatley

BBC drama at the margins: the contrasting fortunes of Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh television drama in the 1990s

166

(17)

Steve Blandford

The new social realism of Clocking Off

183

(15)

Lez Cooke

Becoming popular: some reflections on the relationship between television and theatre

198

(17)

Stephen Lacey

Editors' afterword: directions and redirections

215

(7)

Index

222

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Popular Television Drama Critical Perspectives

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials